If Democratic party registration is any indication of the popularity of the progressive agenda – which Gov. Gavin Newsom calls “the California way” – then San Francisco and Alameda counties are the most progressive in California.
Yet, in the last two years amidst rising crime, exploding overdose deaths, and dying downtowns, San Francisco voters recalled then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022.
The November 2024 election results continue the trend of liberal-leaning voters prioritizing quality of life and safe communities over failed progressive ideology.
Frustrated by rising incidents of retail theft, car break-ins and violent crime, San Francisco voters turned out incumbent mayor London Breed in favor of homeless nonprofit leader and philanthropist Daniel Lurie by a double digit margin according to the latest ranked choice voting tabulations.
Meanwhile, in Alameda County, voters are recalling scandal-plagued Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and controversial District Attorney Pamela Price by overwhelming margins.
Prop 36, the initiative to reform Prop 47 and address the state’s growing retail theft problem, was approved in both counties with more than 65 percent of the vote.
District Attorney Price sealed her fate just weeks after assuming office when she declared that she would seek probation or the lowest possible prison term in all but the most egregious and violent felony criminal offenses. Longer sentences would only be sought after an intensive review. She refused to charge any juveniles as adults, criminal enhancements for infliction of serious injury, the use of a firearm, or membership in a criminal street gang.
It didn’t end there.
In an interview with CBS News in 2023 she stated that, “The DA’s role has really no impact on crime. To create a safe community, we need to invest in alternatives to incarceration.”
She was wrong. Crime exploded in Oakland under her watch, even defying the adage that crime don’t climb by reaching into the tony and very progressive Oakland Hills neighborhood where residents found themselves the victims of home invasions and carjackings – often during broad daylight.
She made many other questionable decisions during her stormy tenure in office:
- Price attempted to prosecute a former assistant district attorney only to see the case thrown out by the state Attorney General’s Office.
- She hired her boyfriend, who had been the subject of a FBI extortion investigation, for a six-figure position with the vague job description of senior program specialist.
- She hired a former Oakland police department commander who retired to avoid disciplinary action as her chief investigator.
- She was unable to produce prosecution statistics even after months of requests by the media.
- She announced to the press that she was placing several experienced prosecutors in her office on leave for vague misconduct allegations only to bring them back later quietly to work after the allegations were not sustained.
Even the Oakland Chapter of the NAACP weighed in, calling for her removal.
Meanwhile, Mayor Thao presided over the decline of Oakland’s downtown, the inability of the Oakland Police Department to recruit and retain police officers, and the termination of a popular chief of police.
I’ve written previously about Oakland’s “crime triangle” along Hegenberger Road and 98th Avenue, which was the scene of sometimes multiple daily robberies mostly of travelers to and from Oakland Airport as well as employees and patrons of area businesses. Denny’s, Black Bear Diner, and the Airport Hilton were shuttered amongst dozens of smaller local business closures. Survivors closed their lobbies to diners and erected compounds for their employees to park their cars in an effort to stay open.
Thao garnered national headlines over the first ever closure of an In-N-Out restaurant due to rising crime and the loss of the Oakland A’s. One was avoidable and the other was probably not. But sports and hamburger fans don’t forgive easily. Added to that was the humiliation of Thao and Price when Governor Newsom assigned CHP officers to patrol the streets and National Guard prosecutors to handle the prosecution caseload. Such is the sometime fate of leaders.
Across the bay, Mayor Breed didn’t lose a sports franchise and San Francisco violent crime rate, while high, is lower than Oakland’s. But San Francisco leads the state in overdose deaths, homelessness, rampant thefts, commercial vacancies, and population loss. Perhaps San Franciscans expected better believing with religious zeal in the ideal of the San Francisco’s version of progressivism.
But Breed, Thao, and Price weren’t alone in losing their jobs. Another product of Bay Area progressivism also lost her job on November 5th –Kamala Harris.
Steve Smith is a senior fellow in urban studies at the Pacific Research Institute.
